Experienced

The snow showed no sign of letting up. It had begun as dust, like flour being lightly tapped from a sieve in the sky; then the flakes grew fat and dense, deftly blocking us in. It felt strangely crushing, like I was a soda can inexorably crumbling under steady pressure from two hands.

I settled in my seat, picked a spot on the floor, and gazed at it idly. Maybe they could still take off. Somehow. Of course, that idea – that stupid idea – flew in the face of the 5 (or 6?) delays I had endured today. I hoped maybe something, somewhere would click into place and we could board and roll ourselves in our blankets and be on our way home. Sure enough, a few moments later, one of the crewmembers approached the podium and the speakers crackled to life. I looked up hopefully.

Ladies and gentlemen, due to the inclement weather, all flights in and out of this airport have been cancelled. We currently have snowplow teams outside working to clear the highway back into the town, but until then please make yourselves comfortable in the gate. Thank you.

Ah. So much for hoping.

Thus spoke the… flight attendant? I don’t know. He certainly didn’t look like a flight attendant. Greenland’s airports, especially those in the northernmost reaches of the country, where my research team and I were working, did not operate like any of the airports I had ever been to. Our pilots (along with the “flight attendant”) wore cheap jeans and faded button-up shirts and sported unkempt hair and heavy five o’clock shadows. They looked to me more like the snowplow drivers we have back in Chicago than pilots. So long as we didn’t go down over the frozen tundra, at this point I couldn’t care less what the pilot looked like.

After making a few cursory remarks about the amenities available at the airport – old military rations, a shelf full of disintegrating books (all in Danish, of course), and a toilet that didn’t flush quite right, the flight attendant stepped down from the podium, and began walking back to the tiny office at the back of the gate.

“Excuse me!” I said, flagging down the flight attendant. He sauntered over to me – he was a rather heavyset man – and idly gazed at me.

I set my next words carefully. “How long until the road is clear to get back to the town?”

His portly face contorted into a grimace, clearly irritated that he had been asked that for probably the third time in the 30-second walk to the office. “Perhaps a couple of hours, perhaps 24 hours” was the reply, thickly accented and tinged with annoyance. I didn’t press the matter further. “Do make yourself comfortable” he said acidly and walked off.

I sat down. Crushed. I had only been here in Greenland for two months, and it was high time I had gone home. I had always enjoyed fieldwork, and I had been looking forward to this trip to Greenland for years. But the extreme conditions of Greenland were not what had made this all a rather unpleasant adventure. I’d venture to say that I’ve been in much worse situations. It was, I’m ashamed to admit, my colleagues that had burdened this trip. I closed my eyes, wishing I was at home, sitting by a fireplace (funnily enough, I don’t even have a fireplace), sipping a mug of hot chocolate. I sat like this for a while, until Fitch startled me out of my contemplation.

“Something on your mind?” he said, in that smooth, resonant voice that made him a favorite among the female students – and a few of the female professors. I was not among them.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was handsome, I’ll give him that. “Nothing, just thinking.”

He smiled wryly. “So, you’re thinking about nothing?”

Silence. How was I supposed to answer that? After a moment, “I was just thinking about how nice it’ll be to be home.”

His smile widened. “Aren’t we all?” He waved a hand abstractly at the rest of our outfit – another 20 or so professors of various disciplines. But to me, they didn’t seem to be thinking. A few were talking animatedly in a hushed circle, but most were hunched over their field laptops, typing furiously.

I, in turn, smiled. Maybe Fitch, of all people, would get it. “Why don’t you have a seat? Talking will help pass the time.”

Fitch obliged. Most people had a stereotypical image of a professor in their head – bow ties, awkward demeanors, formal dress, and so forth. Fitch’s entire being demolished that stereotype. Simply put, he was somewhere between Indiana Jones, a west coast surfer, and a hardcore D&D player – a certain primal “brawniness”, and yet a fiercely intelligent and inquisitive side, with an eye for detail. He seemed aware of this. Maybe it was proper that Fitch was a professor of anthropology. I couldn’t imagine him sitting in a library all day, but I could see him traipsing through jungles and deserts and mountains.

 “Let me guess.” He said nonchalantly, shifting on the unyielding cushion of the seat. “Palava finally stepped on your last nerve.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. How did he know? “Yes” I said evenly.

“She certainly didn’t win any points with me either.” He said, the well-defined contour of his face turning into a slight frown. “What she did, what she will do, is totally out of line.”

Inwardly I smiled. Yes. I thought. Fitch gets it.

As if to respond to that thought, Fitch spoke again. “It’s a tragedy, really. What’s going to happen to the land, and those that live there.” He turned to me. “I’m focused on the human aspect of this project, and it seems they don’t value it. Out of the 20-odd scientists they sent here, I am the only anthropologist. And I’m an afterthought, really. They added me on at the last second, and they gave me the least amount of funding.” He spread his hands, in the classic gesture of “have-not.” And it was certainly true. While the rest of us lugged around various cases full of instruments and equipment, Fitch had brought practically nothing. A small rucksack and the clothes on his back.

“Fitch.” I said, my tone serious. “There are no illusions about what’s going to happen next. Question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Fitch chucked. Oh no. “We’re going to smash Palava’s kneecaps and then we’re going to shit in her bathtub and then we’re going…” he prattled on, dripping with sarcasm. I couldn’t help but chuckle too. I knew I shouldn’t. But I did.

Of the 20 of us, seven are geologists, Palava and I included. Palava is our team chief, appointed by the company to compile our work and analyze our data and then send it back in a final report. From the outset, Palava and I had a poor working relationship. She’s much too… intense? I don’t know. I can’t find a good word to describe her. She is a very factual, logical person. While others were oohing and aahing at the spectacular mountain vistas and valleys and terrain features we visited, Palava quietly brooded, quietly sought an opportunity. We had come here for a very specific purpose, and Palava was intent on fulfilling it. I didn’t know this at the time, but I later found out that Palava was the second highest-funded member of the team, barring only our overall leader, Bailey.

Fitch finished his monologue. He turned to me again. “You know,” he said, still chuckling, “you geologists should learn to see the forest for the trees.”

“Come again?” I wasn’t expecting that, after he threatened to vandalize Palava’s car with a key, among other, nastier things.

Fitch sat back again and grew suddenly serious. Serious, but not unfriendly. “Maybe this is just me,” he began, “but I’ve always felt that you geologists – most scientists, really – don’t truly grasp what they’re looking at.”

The sharp exhalation of breath escaped me before I could stop it. That was uncalled for. Borderline insulting, really. I glowered at Fitch. I was about to say something back when he held up a hand for silence.

“Not in an offensive way, of course. You certainly understand the world around you—if our very limited view of the world could come close to understanding. But you just don’t grasp the fact that maybe some things are meant to be experienced, not understood.”

“Experienced.” I repeat, not fully understanding.

“Yep. Experienced.” He said. “You could tell me readily about how the rocks fell into place, how they were pushed up from the crust, how the coal and oil and precious metals that we found came to be. But perhaps you haven’t really experienced all this in all its glory. Just think about all the things that had to fall into place for what we see now to happen. Not to mention the millions, the billions of years it took. We think we understand it, when we can’t even begin to understand it.”

Fair. I think I can see where Fitch is going with this.

Fitch folded his hands across his lap and looked at the floor. “In my time in South America and Africa, I’ve always tried to frame my work in experience. People really are impossible to understand, it’s better to experience them. To live in the moment and take things for what they are. Maybe you geologists should do that with your rock formations.”

Bullseye. I thought. Fitch knew what I was thinking that whole time. I just didn’t have the… Fitch part of me to put into words. Fitch continued, as if to himself.

“Palava is a smart woman. No doubts there. But she doesn’t get the idea of experiencing something. She should have looked at the mountains we saw and been in awe at the sheer power of nature, the power we can’t even begin to understand. But she didn’t. All she saw was, quite literally, a gold mine. It’s a damned shame too, because soon that beautiful mountain will be blown to bits and the people that live on it will be displaced forever. And all Palava will ever experience from that is the bottom line.”

Fitch should know. He spent his whole adult life observing –experiencing, actually—other people and other ways of living. Something tells me he didn’t spend much time fretting over questions of semantics. He just experienced whatever he was looking at and ran with it. He lived in the moment, appreciated the time we are allotted. I remember he was dazzled by the mountains we saw, but also by the tenacity and ingenuity of the Inuit. But unlike Palava, he let them be, and simply observed the novelty of it.

“My point is, we should live in the moment. Experience things for what they are. There is always much more to what we see. Even when and where we least expect it.”

He turned to me. I nodded my agreement. “Thank you, Fitch.”

He smiled. “It was my pleasure,” he said lightly. “If you’ll excuse me,” He stood up. “I need to check how well that toilet really flushes.”

As Fitch disappeared into the hallway, I sat back. Taking in my surroundings. The scientists were still typing for their lives on their dingy company-issued laptops. The two pilots and the flight attendant played cards at a small folding table. A few of the native Inuit spoke amongst themselves in hushed tones. I widened my gaze. The torn carpet of the floor. The hazy fluorescent lights. The haphazardly arranged seats. The brightly colored garb of the scientists. Their various expressions – fierce concentration, exhaustion, annoyance.

I widened my gaze still. The bleak tundra of inner Greenland. The ice floes. The mountains. The cliff faces. The villages. The snow. The wind. The sky.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the stale, chilled air.

When I opened them, the snow had stopped.